…or rather the Sony Radio Academy Awards as they should be known, but aren’t really.
The radio “Oscars” were held last night in London. Quite why every award ceremony has to be compared to the awfulness of the Oscars is a good question. And they were held at the Grosvenor House Hotel ballroom, a room that broadly speaking, sees a similar type of ceremony practically every night of the year. Indeed, this Saturday, Radio 4 has a documntary – Getting the Gongs – exploring this very phenomenon.
But these awards are the biggest awards in UK radio, and as usual they try to tread a fineline between commercial and BBC radio so that everyone gets a fair crack of the whip. What’s more, as well as being shortlisted as a nominee (and therefore having to buy a table at the ceremony), most categories award Gold, Silver and Bronze awards. The Golds are the ones that get to go up on stage, but everyone loves an award don’t they?
What this means is that alongside the News & Current Affairs Award and the Drama Award, which are only ever realistically going to be won by BBC services, we get The Breakfast Show Award and the Listener Participation Award, and even The Competition Award.
The latter particularly intrigued me, since the BBC got a nomination in a year that it basically wasn’t allowed to do any competitions.
My employer, Absolute Radio, had seven nominations. Careful examination of a large binder of Sony nominations and winners (kindly supplied by the Sony Awards organisation last year), revealed that only twice before had a single commercial station had so many nominations in a single year – with Kiss and Capital 95.8 equalling the achievement.
Anyway, Absolute Coldplay won Gold in the Live Event category, with Iain Lee getting a Silver award in the Listener Particpiation category, our production guys getting a Bronze in the Promo category and Tim Shaw getting a Bronze in the Entertainment Award category. That was particularly tough as Tim was up against Christian O’Connell and Geoff Lloyd in the same category. But Chris Evans won out with Adam & Joe taking silver.
Chris Evans, who hosted the awards, did well, also taking home Gold in the The Music Radio Personality of the Year award, while Adam & Joe, who were up for four awards came away with no Golds.
With a remarkable piece of prescience, Sunday Times radio journalist, Paul Donovan, wrote the following on Sunday, the day before the awards:
Radio 3 will confound history tomorrow when it is crowned UK Station of the Year for the first time in the Sony Radio Academy Awards…
It’s as remarkable that Radio 3 hasn’t previously won this award, as it is that Donovan was so certain that they’d carry home the trophy ahead of time. But they did, and it’s well deserved.
Five Live did very well at the awards. So well indeed, that they produced the following package which aired just before the 8am news this morning. Immodest? I’ll let you decide…

What I will say is that the awards were well deserved (And I do regularly listen to two of their winning programmes – the breakfast show, and of course, the peerless Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode. Someone came in and said hello on the show today).
Paul Brown received a thoroughly deserved Special Award for the tireless work he’s done for radio, and commercial radio especially, over the years.
The most curious winner of the evening was Electric Radio Brixton that gained four nominations across various categories and ended up with two Golds and two Bronzes. I’ve not heard any of the output and it may be well deserved. On the other hand, it’s not very likely that many prison radio operations would even be able to put together the entry fee for Sony Awards. I trust that it won its awards for the right reasons…
Count Arthur Strong won the comedy award – I’ve not really been a listener, but long time readers will probably know that my favourite Radio 4 comedy is Ed Reardon’s Week, and that didn’t even get a nomination.
I haven’t heard any of the Drama Award nominees either, but hopefully, at least the winner, Mr Larkin’s Awkward Day, will get a repeat.
I could tot up all the commercial and all the BBC awards but I’m not sure to what ends that would be. The BBC has vastly more money to spend on its output than commercial radio. That’s even more the case now as the Sony Awards mention in their press release:
“Commercial radio, which has experienced a challenging 12 months…”
That said – good radio is good radio, and it can come from anywhere.